May "Was A Very Good Month" For Noise, Toxins In Our Lungs and Street and Infrastructure Damage!

During the DPW portion of last weeks' informal council meeting, Superintendent Robert Perry began, as usual, by offering the amount of money his department took in last month from septic companies dumping their waste at the city's wastewater treatment plant on Dock Street. He said that at over $54,000, May was "one of our highest months to date." (Monthly "septic revenue" is typically in the low 40's.)  Mr. Perry then concluded, "It was a very good month."  He did not bother mentioning the number of septic trucks that each had to twice drive through the city last month.  How convenient!  (He could have offered that number, of course.)

There is no denying that "a very good month" for septic revenue means more septic trucks than usual driving through, and idling in, the city.  "A very good month" means more incredibly heavy and loud vehicles spewing all sorts of toxins into our lungs and into the atmosphere than we are accustomed to, especially in the city's most challenged neighborhoods.  An extra load of unwanted negative effects and quality-of-life issues that Mr. Perry conveniently ignores!  

But what do the people living on Columbia Street below 3rd and along Front Street get out of a "good month" of additional truck traffic?  Increased risk of asthma and lung or brain cancer?  An increased risk of deafness and hypertension?  More residents dealing with anxiety?  Additionally dangerous streets where children are often found, above and beyond the norm?  Infrastructure below their streets breaking apart because of all the additional heavy trucks rolling by needing to use our waste facility?  These trucks are only coming and going through Hudson because Robert Perry has invited them to utilize our wastewater treatment facility and drive on our fragile streets.

What does Robert Perry see?
Revenue source or destruction source?
You can't have one without the other!

I wonder if Mr. Perry had always been living in the 200 or 300 block of Columbia Street if he would still call a record haul for septic revenue a "good month."  I wonder if he would refer to all the noise those trucks make as they roll by his house as "good noise."  I wonder if Mr. Perry would refer to the damage those obscenely heavy trucks cause to Columbia Street and other streets as "good damage to our streets."  I wonder if Mr. Perry would refer to the damaged infrastructure below Columbia and elsewhere that the trucks cause as "good damage to our infrastructure."  I wonder if Mr. Perry would refer to all the extra toxins in the air as "good additional toxins" if he saw and heard all those septic trucks rolling by his house for the past eleven years he has been our DPW Superintendent.  I wonder if he would want each successive month to find more septic trucks rolling by his house and his neighbors' houses so that the city can see increased revenue.

If all you see is money and a "good month" in inviting more incredibly heavy, loud and destructive internal combustion diesel engine-powered multi-wheeled vehicles into town through residential neighborhoods without acknowledging any of the negative effects, all you are doing is perpetuating an unlivable city and planet.  My guess is that our DPW Superintendent, who does not live on Columbia Street or elsewhere on the truck route, sees nothing adverse about the septic trucks he invites into town.  The more trucks that come through town, drop their waste in our facility on Dock Street and head back out of town the merrier!  Bring 'em on!  Show me the trucks and the money!  Hooray for hugely polluting and damaging trucks, we love them all! Heck, it wouldn't surprise me one bit if Mr. Perry is a climate change denier and simply doesn't care about poor people.  The host of quality-of-life issues that the septic trucks bring us is simply an inconvenient truth for Mr. Perry, just easier to ignore and not even acknowledge.  Thank goodness no 2nd ward council members ever ask for an explanation from him!  Why would they?

Heavy and loud, always spewing toxins

Loud and heavy, always spewing toxins

Do you think that one penny of DPW's monthly septic revenue is earmarked to mitigate the quality-of-life issues those invited trucks bring to all Hudson residents and the DPW (i.e., fixing streets and infrastructure below)?  Of course not.  No sense in fixing what ain't broken!  What "issues"?

Septic trucks are classified as "heavy-duty" trucks, meaning they weigh more than 26,000 pounds when empty.  This is close to ten times as heavy as the typical mid-sized car.  But septic trucks are so heavy when full of pee and poo that they require a special heavy-duty engine.  In other words, they do a world of damage wherever they go, especially on and along city streets not meant for regular use by heavy-duty anything.  Do you think Robert Perry cares how many of these trucks he invites into town to use our facility?  Hell, why stop at $50,000?  Imagine how better off we would all be and how ecstatic Mr. Perry would be if monthly septic revenue were to reach over $100,000!  He might pee his pants! 

"Mr. Perry, what do you spend your septic revenue on?"

Let's hope that June and July are "very good months" too!  We definitely need more of what May brought us!

A friend of mine who owns a house in the 200 block of Columbia knows his trucks pretty well.  Since moving in 10 years ago he and his wife have had no choice but to become familiar with them.  Occasionally their house shakes (I have experienced it) as trucks, mainly Colarusso's gravel trucks, pass by 12 feet from the front of their house where their bedroom window is located.  Sometimes the trucks are just idling directly in front of the house, waiting for the 30 second red light to change. The amount of unwelcome noise from the trucks' engines and brakes is obscene, especially when the windows are open on nice days and when trucks are starting to move after waiting at the red light at 3rd Street. 

A few weeks ago, we got to talking about the truck traffic on Columbia.  For the first time, my friend said this to me:  "Colarusso's trucks are pretty bad, but those sewage trucks are even worse.  They're so goddamn loud."

That's the loud that Robert Perry never hears or feels shaking his house and filling his lungs directly with toxic engine exhaust.